PC-esque NPCs

[poopyloop]

Hey guys, I need to call on your DMing wisdom
So I'm DMing a campaign where the players are going to have a rival adventuring group of sorts, going for the same prize and positions as my players. I also have opportunities for temporary allies (for a mission or 2 probably at most) as well as plans for a "trainee" where they could all have input in how they grow and develop as a more permanent NPC in the party.

What I need help on is how strong these NPCs should be

Initial thoughts on the rival group: there are 4 PCs, and 3 in this rival group. Currently my PCs are lv 2 soon to be 3. Is level 2 to 3 too big of a jump if they have an all-out fight? I want it to be very tough but still doable for them (this would be a rivalry/friendly fight, not to the death or anything). Should I make them fully fleshed out like a PC would be with all the traits of their class? Should I even give them classes? If you've done this let me know how you handled it, or how you would were you to do this, as this is the most important part for me, as I plan on this group being around for the majority of the game.

As far as the temp allies: I'm thinking not fully fleshed out, a few abilities here and there with a small amount of skills the party might be lacking as well as not overly-useful in combat, but a good pot shot here and there, with a few small exceptions. This isn't as important as it has only come up once and so far my players have not taken similar opportunities, but I want some input on this in case it comes up again.

And finally the trainee. I just had a thought for this right before we last played, essentially it would be just like a PC but start with garbage stats across the board, with more opportunities to add to them as time went on. Would level up at a different pace than the PCs and would be potentially anything they wanted. It'd be a lot of work for them however.

So, what do you think? on the right track or what?

[willdaBEAST]

I did a bit of this myself, building NPCs as PCs and a problem you run into during combat is that PCs are intended to do more damage, but have less hp than monsters. What this results in is that combat between PCs and NPCs built as PCs becomes more about who strikes first and dumps all of their high powered resources (novaing). To me that's not very enjoyable, but there might be ways to make it work.

I started using https://rpgtinker.com/index.php?template=Holy+Champion&race=Tiefling&radioattribute=Hero+Array+%2818%2C16%2C14%2C12%2C1 0%2C10%29&numberofhitdice=10&hitdice=d8&hidefeatures=nothing which is a great resource to quickly build more specialized NPCs.

[Man_Over_Game]

There's a few design schemes that are important to always keep in the back of your mind when it comes to making up stuff:


NPCs should not be cooler/more badass than the PCs, unless the PCs can become better than the NPC soon.
Enemies have high accuracy and health, but low damage. This is good design, and probably the most important thing to remember.
Combat is fun when decisions matter.


On your rival fight, feel free to make them as badass as possible. These are what your heroes should aspire to be, and give them ideas for how to form their characters. Since there are fewer of them, and you don't want the fight to end in death, they should be focused around survivability, with effects that are more effective in short-term burst combat while low in damage. Also, they should be badass.

So my ideas are: Bladesinger, Life Cleric, Scout Rogue.


A Life Cleric, with Warding Bond and Heavy Armor Master, is a great idea for a "Cleric of Champions" who supports warriors as they charge into combat. The relationship between Warding Bond + Heavy Armor Master means that the Cleric's "ward" gets +1 to AC and saving throws, and the damage is divided evenly between the Ward and the Cleric, and any nonmagical physical damage the Cleric takes is reduced by 3. A powerful combo. They shield the Bladesinger, the primary tank, while keeping enemies from breaking the front line to get to the Scout. Their weakness is the Bond on the Bladesinger, while also being weak to magic damage themselves.

The Bladesinger is the primary tank. They have ludicrously high AC and the Warcaster feat, so they can use spells for Opportunity Attacks. They heavily utilize Booming Blade to keep enemies in place. They use Concentration spells to buff the party and control the battlefield with their improved Concentration saves. Their weakness is their saving throws, making them susceptible to disabling effects. They may utilize spells like Fire Sphere or Dragon's Breath (on the Cleric) for great effect.

The Scout is the primary damage dealer. He is extremely mobile, and deals consistent damage, but his AC is only fair, and his defenses are fairly low. He relies mostly on his teammates to keep the enemies away while he picks them apart. Being focused will be a major concern, as are Saving Throws (does not currently have Evasion).

I'd recommend these combatants to be at level 4. The best strategy would be to hurt the Cleric whenever possible (to make him waste his healing spells), and get around the front liners to focus on the Rogue. The concentration spells on the Bladesinger are tough to deal with, but his damage is fairly low on a turn-to-turn basis, and is mostly a mobile obstacle.

This team is focused completely around dealing consistent damage and spreading incoming damage evenly to avoid casualties.

[poopyloop]

willdabeast - I didn't really think of PCs and monsters being built differently, that's a good point. However, I don't think, at such a low level, that nova'ing will be as big of an issue. I will have to think about that and experiment a bit as they level up however. I am not planning more than a few fights with them, they will be rivals in the same group, so if the players do end up killing them, they will face major consequences (if they are even able to do so). That link should prove useful, thanks.

man over game - so, you're saying generic NPCs that will be helping them from time to time should be like downplayed PCs, being mediocre and not nearly on par with the PCs, while the rivals should in fact, be better than them. The rivals themselves have no reason to kill the PCs, but they do have reason to maybe threaten or rough them up a bit, but at the end of the day they are technically allies and wouldn't want the PCs dead, so unless the PCs start trying to take them out, I don't foresee any reason they would ever kill each other. They would, however, challenge them to decide disputes and whatnot, as they will see themselves as superior to the PCs and want to prove it to them and to themselves. So fighting them from time to time isn't out of the question. I like your ideas, but that seems a little toofocused on survival I think. I want the PCs to be able to take them down potentially, especially later on. I did already have them in mind, not that I couldn't change it, as they have only been seen in passing, and nothing has been alluded to that they are, in fact, the rivals. My plan was a human hunter ranger, possibly MC'd into monk or something else, and a human barbarian, unsure of the details, that both act as thug-ish and antagonistic characters, with their leader, an aasimar paladin/celestial warlock, as their voice of reason to keep them in line, but still somewhat antagonistic to the PCs. I figured those 3 would be a good balance between damage and tankiness to be a good challenge for the players.

[MaxWilson]

Hey guys, I need to call on your DMing wisdom
So I'm DMing a campaign where the players are going to have a rival adventuring group of sorts, going for the same prize and positions as my players. I also have opportunities for temporary allies (for a mission or 2 probably at most) as well as plans for a "trainee" where they could all have input in how they grow and develop as a more permanent NPC in the party.

*snip*

So, what do you think? on the right track or what?

Consider recruiting a rival group of actual PCs so they can do nasty things to each other like this: http://www.blindpanic.com/humor/vecna.htm

[Man_Over_Game]

man over game - so, you're saying generic NPCs that will be helping them from time to time should be like downplayed PCs, being mediocre and not nearly on par with the PCs, while the rivals should in fact, be better than them. The rivals themselves have no reason to kill the PCs, but they do have reason to maybe threaten or rough them up a bit, but at the end of the day they are technically allies and wouldn't want the PCs dead, so unless the PCs start trying to take them out, I don't foresee any reason they would ever kill each other. They would, however, challenge them to decide disputes and whatnot, as they will see themselves as superior to the PCs and want to prove it to them and to themselves. So fighting them from time to time isn't out of the question. I like your ideas, but that seems a little toofocused on survival I think. I want the PCs to be able to take them down potentially, especially later on. I did already have them in mind, not that I couldn't change it, as they have only been seen in passing, and nothing has been alluded to that they are, in fact, the rivals. My plan was a human hunter ranger, possibly MC'd into monk or something else, and a human barbarian, unsure of the details, that both act as thug-ish and antagonistic characters, with their leader, an aasimar paladin/celestial warlock, as their voice of reason to keep them in line, but still somewhat antagonistic to the PCs. I figured those 3 would be a good balance between damage and tankiness to be a good challenge for the players.

That's exactly correct on all fronts.

The reason I recommended those particular options is because players like being able to make decisions in combat, and have those decisions matter.

Enemies predominantly have high health and accuracy, and low damage. This is intentional, as it means that enemies are consistent (making what's a threat obvious) without being immediately lethal (so players have a chance to respond to the threat). The high health is to compensate for the low damage, and also so that players can manage resources as part of the challenge of a fight (which the enemies generally don't care about). A fight can be easy with two casts of Fireball, but the rest of the dungeon can be much harder for the party. All-in-all, this makes a good formula for all RPGs, not just table-top RPGs.

On the flip-side, players have low accuracy and health, but high damage. This is also intentional, as it means that when a player succeeds, it succeeds well. It "feels" like gambling, since the difference between a hit or a miss is vast, and the chance is even between the two. The low health is to pose as a way of feeling like you're constantly near death. When you hear damage numbers in the 20s all around you during several turns, and you only have 30 health, then you naturally feel tension. The fact is, most monsters would only do about 10-15 damage, and it's the players that hit more than that.

If you've ever played Final Fantasy, and wondered why players deal 5000 damage but your characters only had 4000 health, this is the reasoning why. Also remember that having your character becoming confused can be gamechanging. One of your guys killing one of your own party members in a single strike is very common in these RPGs, and it's very common in Table-Top RPGS when you have Player-vs-Player combat. It's why most DMs don't touch it, as it often comes down to who draws first.

Player agency is only valid if the players can think of the circumstance and do something about it. A fight to the death is only fun if your decisions matter, otherwise it's a glorified cutscene and not a game.

That's why I put emphasis on my particular party setup. There's not much they can do about a monk, who either saves or doesn't, moves or doesn't, or hits or doesn't. There's not much they can do about a Barbarian's Rage, other than maybe put him to sleep (but he will have ludicrous amounts of health anyway). Depending on the loadout of the Warlock, he's probably loaded with damage or healing anyway. While it's a balanced team, they all deal solid damage and can easily take out one of your PC's in a single turn (maybe even before they can act).

But a concentrating Bladesinger with high AC and low saves, a healer with limited spell slots that's ward bonded to the tank, and a scout rogue who relies on running away are all things that players can plan around and deal with.


Your loadout is perfectly fine, and it might even be cool, but as a player, how would you deal with it?

[poopyloop]

Max - I've actually read that before. It would lead to interesting interactions and wacky scenarios but that's not really what I'm going for here

Man over game - maybe a simple way to fix the issue would be to simply cut down all the rival group's damage down a bit while giving them an extra hit die or 2? I more want those specific classes because in my head they work well with each other as an adventuring group and can cover each other in battle. When you break it down, both groups contain a tank, a healer, and a damage dealer, mine just has all 3 able to deal decent damage, and less on spells. I was possibly thinking of making the barb into a subclass in 'xanthar's lost notes to everything else' where they essentially get a limited amount of spells from the sorcerer spell list and a different rage style to cast spells in. But looking at it, I do suppose it is rather damage heavy party. However, my players consist of a paladin and a life cleric who was planing on MCing into dreams druid, a very healy MC combo, and so far, none of the PCs have even dropped to 0 HP. I think they would be able to handle heavy damage, especially if the NPCs targeted different PCs, like "you handle the big one, I've got this guy over here" style. I also think that the players would be able to deal with this setup as well tho, as it is pretty straightforward party. I think they'll be able to strategize around it well enough, since the palalock will still have limited healing and spells, as will the barb if I go that route, and they will still be dealing consistent damage overall. I guess I'm just not really seeing as much of an issue with it myself, just doesn't seem so different to me where they would be able to strategize around one of the groups and not the other, if you get my reasoning.

[Man_Over_Game]

That works out well. The main concern with *most* Barbarian/Monk/Warlocks/Paladins is that those are all "I hit hard and do nothing else" classes, and ONE of those is fun to fight against in an encounter, like a single ogre in a room of goblins.

With what you described, it sounds fine. I'd say 4 level two characters and 3 level three characters are roughly equal in power if they're both smart. If you intentionally want the NPC's to deal less damage (or divide out the damage because they're being dumb), and you want them to survive long enough to be challenging, I'd make them level four.

Otherwise, it sounds like you have a solid plan.

[MaxWilson]

Max - I've actually read that before. It would lead to interesting interactions and wacky scenarios but that's not really what I'm going for here

Okay, if you want a group of genuine NPCs, here's something I've found useful in the past: have the players create them and give each of them some distinguishing feature or habit. For me, it made the players get excited when "their" NPCs came onstage. (DM: "As you pass by the armored figure, you smell a whiff of... strawberries?" Player: "That must be Rolf!") My players didn't know if they were creating potential allies or rivals when they made the NPCs--they were just NPCs that I promised to insert into the campaign at some point--and the NPCs wound up becoming some of each, but it should work fine for your scenario with pure rivals as well.

It shouldn't really affect the challenge level per se because you can adjust the difficulty just by playing enemies smarter, but it may make it feel more fair when you do play them smart, which should be more fun.

The fact that there are only 3 NPCs should be enough to give the 4 PCs a clear edge. The combat power of 4 characters is approximately (4/3)^2 = 1.77 times as much as only 3 characters, in theory, if everyone is being equally smart. PCs should come out of a 4 on 3 fight bruised and battered but victorious, most of the time.

If you're really evil, you can have the players create 4 enemy NPCs, and then kill one of them off and make the players "responsible" for it to explain the vendetta the other 3 have against the PCs. This is a bit of a Batman Gambit (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BatmanGambit) though.

[poopyloop]

man over game - yeah, fair point. I think I just didn't do a good enough job explaining what I had in my head. The barb will be doing mostly damagy stuff but the pally/lock will be doing much more support than offensive things, and I'll try to make them all do that as well so the damage isnt too crazy and its more interesting than just smashing metal against metal. I appreciate the input.


Max - well that does sound really interesting. I think if I did that, tho, I would want to have done that from the start, and we are a few sessions in already. I'll definitely try to use this in the future. But you do bring up another point, I've had a DM (and done it myself) where the fight seems like it will be too hard, so they/I tried to split up the damage, just to have the players come in and decimate the enemies right after. It seems like playing them dumber is really not the way to do it, but I guess it would depend on a fight to fight basis. I'm definitely not going to do something that requires a batman gambit tho, lol. In all the groups I've DM'd (granted not that many) this is the group that is most predictable, but even still I wouldn't want to leave it to that.

[MaxWilson]

Max - well that does sound really interesting. I think if I did that, tho, I would want to have done that from the start, and we are a few sessions in already.

Why is that?

I did it in the middle of a campaign, just because that's when I thought of it. (I wanted to inject some variety.) I don't see anything that breaks here if you do it now, with or without the Batman gambit--and the Batman gambit probably works better in the middle of the campaign because you can predict PC dynamics. (Batman gambit would be something like giving NPC #4 a cool magic item and having him/her approach the PCs offering to sell it, then act belligerently at their "low offers" and maybe pull out a weapon and brandish it threateningly, expecting the PCs to kill him/her and loot the body. The risk is that they might not take the bait, so then you need a backup plan like "NPC #4 never came home, and now everyone blames the PCs, but it's not really their fault," which puts a more heroic spin on their rivalry. Maybe NPC #4 was actually killed by mind flayers, and the PCs can clear their name with the law by just finding the mind flayer infestation and capturing some witnesses--but NPCs #1-3 might be harder to convince.)

[poopyloop]

Why is that?
I guess mostly just because it sets up expectations at the beginning of the game that they will run into their guy at some point, so they have the anticipation of waiting for them. As far as this specific way to set up the rivals, I don't think I would want all 4 players to make an NPC and then have one of theirs die right away to set up the plot, I'd feel bad for them lol. But anyway, I have the rivalry already set in motion the minds of the NPC rival group, no real need for anything more to add to it, if they thought the PCs killed one of their own I think it would be a much more malicious rivalry than I want.

[MaxWilson]

I guess mostly just because it sets up expectations at the beginning of the game that they will run into their guy at some point, so they have the anticipation of waiting for them. As far as this specific way to set up the rivals, I don't think I would want all 4 players to make an NPC and then have one of theirs die right away to set up the plot, I'd feel bad for them lol. But anyway, I have the rivalry already set in motion the minds of the NPC rival group, no real need for anything more to add to it, if they thought the PCs killed one of their own I think it would be a much more malicious rivalry than I want.

Sounds like you're all set then. Let us know how it goes!

[tchntm43]

I did a bit of this myself, building NPCs as PCs and a problem you run into during combat is that PCs are intended to do more damage, but have less hp than monsters. What this results in is that combat between PCs and NPCs built as PCs becomes more about who strikes first and dumps all of their high powered resources (novaing). To me that's not very enjoyable, but there might be ways to make it work.

This is really interesting. I went through my adventure and made character sheets for about 1/3 of the relevant NPCs using the same process I used to make characters (the others have no combat ability but it was still useful to give them ideals and bonds and stuff). I suppose I could rewrite some of these, but I wonder if you can't remedy this problem somewhat by simply multiplying the hit points by some value, and applying a fractional multiplier for the damage, so that they would fit in with the results you want to get. I'm not exactly sure what would be the right multipliers, but I'm thinking maybe HP x2, and damage x0.5 as a starting place.

Also, regarding novaing... isn't this only an issue if the players know that the NPCs are built this way? If they don't know it would be the best strategy, and are more conservative about using abilities that have limited uses per day, I can also choose not to make the NPCs do that either. And, as someone who played in 2E where it was relatively easy for a 1st level character to die from a single strike from a lowly orc, I'm familiar with ignoring the dice rolls I make behind the DM screen if necessary for the enjoyment of the game.

[willdaBEAST]

This is really interesting. I went through my adventure and made character sheets for about 1/3 of the relevant NPCs using the same process I used to make characters (the others have no combat ability but it was still useful to give them ideals and bonds and stuff). I suppose I could rewrite some of these, but I wonder if you can't remedy this problem somewhat by simply multiplying the hit points by some value, and applying a fractional multiplier for the damage, so that they would fit in with the results you want to get. I'm not exactly sure what would be the right multipliers, but I'm thinking maybe HP x2, and damage x0.5 as a starting place.

Also, regarding novaing... isn't this only an issue if the players know that the NPCs are built this way? If they don't know it would be the best strategy, and are more conservative about using abilities that have limited uses per day, I can also choose not to make the NPCs do that either. And, as someone who played in 2E where it was relatively easy for a 1st level character to die from a single strike from a lowly orc, I'm familiar with ignoring the dice rolls I make behind the DM screen if necessary for the enjoyment of the game.

There might be some kind of conversion guide posted elsewhere on the internet, but HP x2 looks a bit severe to me. I'd recommend something like 125% HP, 75% of the damage, tweak if necessary.

The situation that made the novaing issue apparent was an encounter I set up for my party. I had built a fighter NPC and have a very optimized ranged fighter PC. The NPC attacked the PC and nearly killed him, but didn't use his action surge, which would have almost certainly taken the PC down. The PC then proceeded to nova, using sharpshooter, action surge, managed to crit twice and took the NPC down before he could even second wind. I was a little miffed that my cool NPC died before he got to do much of anything, but the alternative seemed even worse. Taking out a PC before they can even react can thematically be interesting, but it steps heavily on player agency imo.

I'm not saying that building NPCs like PCs can't work, I just think it poses significant problems for combat. Both in terms of balance and enjoyment.